Melancholy and the Infinite Southerner....

This handsome devil...

and I am not being silly... people thought he was handsome

 is James Henry Hammond.  James had an illustrious career in the antebellum south.  He was a lawyer, a school teacher (if you want to talk about someone loathing a job), a newspaper editor, a senator, a governor...  This guy did it all.

He was also pretty weird.  This guy was prone to fits of depression that worried his father so much that he sent for him to come live at home.  He worshiped the Romantics, wrote poetry, but at the same time wanted to be known in the South and beat a guy over the head with a stick because he didn't appreciate the verbal war between the two going on in their respective newspapers.  
He relentlessly pursued women a few times, but also was rumored to have had a homosexual affair in college with a friend of his...there are letters between the two that pretty much lay it out there, but you know..... who knows.

This guy just is... well... different.

First, his father really did a number on him.  He didn't beat him, he didn't treat him like crap...he pushed him and always worried about his son failing because well, in truth... he kind of did, a lot.  Elisha Hammond could never really get to the success level he wanted and he tried through a lot of different avenues, like being the steward at South Carolina College which paved the way here for the first goth kid to get into school.  He tried farming, he tried teaching, he tried different boom businesses, but James' dad could never make it.
Strangely enough (and if you know me... really strange)
Elisha Hammond got a job directing a school in Macon, Georgia when he was really down on his luck in the 1820s.  He moved to middle Georgia, bought a place... and the school he worked for kept not paying him, so again he was in financial straits.  He died here... depressed and unhappy...WOW.  LOL..

cozy!

Fort Hawkins there (already out of use I think) might have been one of the only things IN Macon at the time when Elisha set up shop... LOL  

Second...this guy really thought he sucked.  I mean it didnt matter how many compliments, how many successes, what he did... he thought he sucked.  He wrote about being the most unhappy man on earth, he talked about leaving the state tons of times as a failure... and all the while the VP of the US is coming to his place and having a chat....uhh... OK guy... 

He did like slavery and nullification though, oh man... you get him talking about that and there was no stopping him.